Upgrades to software that let Mac users run Windows on OS X have become a yearly occurrence, as Parallels and VMware keep pace with new versions of the Apple and Microsoft desktop operating systems.

This year is no exception, with Parallels Desktop 10 becoming available today. Users of the previous two versions can upgrade to version 10 immediately for $49.99. Everyone else can purchase the new software for $79.99 beginning August 26. A student edition will run for $39.99.

Further Reading

A Start8 menu for Windows, IT security, and even improved gaming show up this year.

VMware hasn’t yet announced when the new version of Fusion will come out, but you can probably expect it soon, or at least by the time Apple releases OS X Yosemite this fall.

As usual, your existing Parallels virtual machines should keep working just fine even after OS X Mavericks gives way to Yosemite. Given the pricing structure, upgrading every other release makes sense for a lot of Mac users who need Windows or Linux applications in their daily lives. Users who want every last bit of performance improvements and all the latest usability tweaks might feel compelled to upgrade with each new version, but casual users can usually hold off without any problems.

We haven’t been able to test version 10 yet, but Parallels described the new features in a demo and announcement. Performance improvements will let users open Windows documents “up to 48 percent faster,” get up to 30 percent more battery life, use up to 10 percent less memory, and launch Office 2013 applications up to 50 percent faster. As always, these improvements can vary widely depending on the workload. For example, there would be no improvement in battery life for workloads that use an entire CPU, Parallels officials said.

There is some good news on disk space. Previous versions of Parallels have an option to “reclaim” disk space the virtual machine no longer needs, a process that can free up several gigabytes, but it requires shutting down the VM. In version 10, Parallels said a new “real-time optimization” feature will automatically reclaim disk space without the VM needing to be shut down.

As always, Parallels lets you run Windows either inside a single window or in Coherence mode, which makes Windows applications appear as if they are Mac ones. Changes in Parallels Desktop 10 let Windows applications use Yosemite-specific features and further their integration into the Mac workflow.

Parallels 10 will take advantage of Yosemite’s much-heralded Continuity system, intended to bridge the gap between OS X and iOS devices. In practice, this means that Internet Explorer users will be able to click on a phone number in a webpage and start a call, just as they would be able to with Safari. The call would be completed with the Mac, relying on either FaceTime or an iPhone connected to the Mac.

There’s also more integration with Internet accounts set up on the Mac. “Users can share files, text, or web pages from Windows using Internet accounts configured on their Mac such as Twitter, Facebook, Vimeo, Flickr; or send them via e-mail, AirDrop, and Messages,” the Parallels announcement said.

It will also be easier to create virtual machines, according to Parallels. Users will be given the option of setting up a VM optimized for productivity, games, design, or development. For example, the games desktop would have more CPU and video memory and a mouse pointer that’s fully dedicated to the VM. Users will still be able to configure all the settings of virtual machines individually if they prefer more fine-tuned control.

Other small changes: The Outlook 2013 icon in the OS X Dock will now show an unread badge to indicate how many new messages you have. To open a file in Windows, users of Parallels 10 will be able to drag the file to the virtual machine icon in the Dock. The Windows Start Screen will also look and behave more like the Mac’s Launchpad this time around, Parallels said.

Phones, tablets, and business software

Parallels also offers mobile software for accessing virtual machines from phones and tablets. Last year, Parallels upgraded the “Parallels Access” mobile service and started charging $79.99 per year per computer, the same price that Parallels Desktop cost for a perpetual license.

Parallels realized its pricing mistake and now charges $19.99 per year for mobile access for up to five remote computers. The software was upgraded in June and thus isn’t getting another upgrade right now. It works on iPhones, iPads, Android phones, and tablets, and attempts to make Windows and Mac applications usable on touch screens.

Like VMware, Parallels also offers business versions of its software. These bring management and security features, giving IT shops the ability to control updates to VMs or make a VM automatically expire when an employer or contractor no longer needs it. Parallels also offers a plugin for Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager, allowing the software to manage Macs alongside PCs.

Parallels added “linked clones” to the business version this year, in which multiple copies of a virtual machine can be created without duplicating the entire thing. Only the differences are saved, saving disk space. VMware Fusion implemented this feature last year, so Parallels is catching up.

The Parallels Desktop Enterprise Edition will cost about $100 per seat before volume discounts.

Parallels, the company, sucks. I've been bitten by their shady practices in the past. This is just an other example: They advertise a price of $80, but when one actually tries to buy it for that price, they silently change the price to 109 swiss francs (which is about $109). And if the currency selector is used to switch back to US $, the price rises again to $130 US!

I have windows in a boot-camp install. And I have OS X in a separate partition. They're separate OSes, and I want them to /stay separate/. The automatic booting of my bootcamp partition in a VM to start a windows app after each update has auto-reassociated files with windows applications just makes everything annoying, and it clutters up the "open with" menu with 20+ windows applications that don't even support the file anyways.

I'm not planning to upgrade to P10 after moving to Yosemite. Since Yosemite's beta 3 Parallel's already providing some Continuity integration via un update for version 9 - which apparently just runs fine on 10.10.

One doesn't have to upgrade every year. For virtually any company on the "1 update every year"-train other than Apple I always skip every other year. Not defending Parallell here though - just saying.

Parallels, the company, sucks. I've been bitten by their shady practices in the past. This is just an other example: They advertise a price of $80, but when one actually tries to buy it for that price, they silently change the price to 109 swiss francs (which is about $109). And if the currency selector is used to switch back to US $, the price rises again to $130 US!

My experience with Parallels is that the software is good and does what it's supposed to do well, but I completely concur with you regarding its business practices.

It also drives me nuts that Parallels advertises to me (I've paid for the software, stop advertising to me!) and that you can't turn this "feature" off. Oh sure, you can click on "don't show me this again" but that click's only good for that particular ad, not the next "different" ad Parallels decides to display the next time you fire up your VM. Between their gauche and deceptive pricing models and sales, I'm pretty sure I'm jumping back to VMware Fusion come this cycle. If it weren't for VMware's OpenGL issues, I'd have made the leap last year.

I have windows in a boot-camp install. And I have OS X in a separate partition. They're separate OSes, and I want them to /stay separate/. The automatic booting of my bootcamp partition in a VM to start a windows app after each update has auto-reassociated files with windows applications just makes everything annoying, and it clutters up the "open with" menu with 20+ windows applications that don't even support the file anyways.

It's a VM, not a funky application container.

Agreed. I don't want integration and I very specifically want OS isolation for a number of reasons, not the least of which is security. Getting rid of all that cross OS clutter is a pain in the ass.

I do a ton of dev work for Windows using my Macs, so I'm happy to have any improvement. More speed for playing games, more features, it's all good. I wish they'd let snapshots of the computer and install live on an external hard drive rather than on the home SSD...maybe this will be in this version.

I do a ton of dev work for Windows using my Macs, so I'm happy to have any improvement. More speed for playing games, more features, it's all good. I wish they'd let snapshots of the computer and install live on an external hard drive rather than on the home SSD...maybe this will be in this version.

Could you not mount your external drive at the required location for that to work?

They advertise a price of $80, but when one actually tries to buy it for that price, they silently change the price to 109 swiss francs (which is about $109). And if the currency selector is used to switch back to US $, the price rises again to $130 US!

I discovered a way around that. I used a proxy until the point where it gave me a PayPal link, then copied that into the browser. Voilà - fair pricing.

Parallels Desktop has performed very well for me. VirtualBox has been slow for virtualising Win8 on OS X every time I've tried. Then there are all the other little features (some mentioned in the article above).

I just dumped my copy of Parallels for VMware about a month ago. I first bought Parallels to run Windows apps on my Macbook Pro when Apple put out OSX Lion. At the time, Parallels ran ok, although it was slow. As time went on, I added hardware to the laptop, eventually getting to 16 GB RAM and 2 TB for the hard drive. In the meantime, Apple updated the system to Mountain Lion then Mavericks. All the while, Parallels continued to run slower and slower (even though I dutifully paid for and installed all of their updates, and bumped up the Parallels available ram to 4 GB and 256 GB for the virtual drive). By now, it was taking Parallels/Windows 7 Ultimate two hours just to start up "Windows Update" and scan for updates. Forget about actually installing any updates.

On my real windows machine, Windows Update is slow, but not THAT slow. It finally got to the point that I was spending all my time updating Windows on Parallels (since, as you probably know, Windows always has new security updates each month, and I always brought Windows up-to-date before using it again).

Frustrated with the speed, I searched through comments on Parallels performance issues and a found lot of other complains about Parallels' speed (or lack thereof). Parallels has a lot of "speed tuning" advice, but most of the advice is to turn off Parallels features (which seems rather self-defeating in my opinion).

Giving up on Parallels, I purchased VMware, installed it along with Windows 7 Ultimate, and the speed difference is REMARKABLE. My Macbook Pro now runs Windows 7 as fast or nearly as fast as my real Windows computer does.

Of course your situation is no doubt different than mine. All I can say is that there are lots of complaints about Parallels speed in the various forums. And my install of VMware is running great. I for one will NOT be spending any more money on Parallels.

That is unless you just dump on everything. Say how they hate the product, what a waste of time it is. That's what everyone seems to want. Everyone is afraid to say they like something because of the assholes claiming "bias" or "fanboy" or now "advertisement brought to you by".

Of course your situation is no doubt different than mine. All I can say is that there are lots of complaints about Parallels speed in the various forums. And my install of VMware is running great. I for one will NOT be spending any more money on Parallels.

I'm one of the lucky people. Never any sluggish behaviour while running the VM with Win8 or anything like that. I have considered Fusion simply because it's cheaper, though. They occasionally offer crossgrade discounts too, I think ("leave the competition, get a discount").

Last year I evaluated all three OS X virtualisation options (Fusion, Parallels, and VirtualBox) and out of those that had decent performance running Windows 8 (so *not* VirtualBox) I chose Fusion precesely because it had no integration features by default (you have to enable them).

Parallels stuffed OS X full with annoying useless things that I hated - not to mention the adverts!It feels like they just don’t know how else to justify the yearly upgrades - so they implement useless ‘in-your-face’ features.

They advertise a price of $80, but when one actually tries to buy it for that price, they silently change the price to 109 swiss francs (which is about $109). And if the currency selector is used to switch back to US $, the price rises again to $130 US!

I discovered a way around that. I used a proxy until the point where it gave me a PayPal link, then copied that into the browser. Voilà - fair pricing.

But you don't understand. When non-Americans pay more for consumer products than Americans, that IS fair. After all, we have to pay for all sorts of things you don't have to pay for: deductibles, copays, mcmansions, ammo, etc.

I've used VMware and I've used VirtualBox on both Windows and Linux hosts and guests. VirtualBox is slow when compared to VMware. The virtual disk is painful on VirtualBox if you don't have a SSD to hold the giant disk files, and the video support in VirtualBox is criminally slow compared to VMware. VMware is fast enough to use the guest full time without a SSD and not feel slowed down, as long as you don't expect to game on it.

Parallels, the company, sucks. I've been bitten by their shady practices in the past. This is just an other example: They advertise a price of $80, but when one actually tries to buy it for that price, they silently change the price to 109 swiss francs (which is about $109). And if the currency selector is used to switch back to US $, the price rises again to $130 US!

I've been using //'s since day dot and have very little trouble with it (other than it not running on certain betas from time to time).

I find it fast, and it only gets faster. I've found it's hardly worth upgrading since about version 7 however, so concur on that front, but as far as it being a good product, I think compared to Virtual Box or Fusion it is the best but a little way, esp. if performance is important to you.

Having said that, you can't beat VB for price, and for a lot of things, it is good enough, esp. running up Android for dev.

Surprised at all the negative comments on Parallels, I've been running it on my desktop and laptops since version 4 with few issues. Yes the remote app for the phone that they automatically enrolled people in was a major screw up, but I never used it and ignored the emails about paying for it.

The ad popups I got only a handful of times, and not at all anymore, not sure when the stopped, but neither of theses things stopped me using the product.

VirtualBox isn't worth mentioning, it's shit even under Linux, which is where it is supposed to be best.

VMWare Fusion is better in some ways, but VMWare the company has been an almost continual let down in terms of supporting any other platform than Windows for their server tools. "Yes! We now have an appliance for managing our servers, but you still need Windows to deploy the appliance in the first instance, and then you need Flash to use the interface." Screw them

They advertise a price of $80, but when one actually tries to buy it for that price, they silently change the price to 109 swiss francs (which is about $109). And if the currency selector is used to switch back to US $, the price rises again to $130 US!

I discovered a way around that. I used a proxy until the point where it gave me a PayPal link, then copied that into the browser. Voilà - fair pricing.

But you don't understand. When non-Americans pay more for consumer products than Americans, that IS fair. After all, we have to pay for all sorts of things you don't have to pay for: deductibles, copays, mcmansions, ammo, etc.

$80 is Just the price for the virtualization software? Windows is $120, so it's actually $200 with which you could nearly buy an entire Windows laptop.

The Apple tax is especially high here. Why not use Virtual box and save the $80?

To each his own.

In my case, it's a lot easier to carry two laptops through the airport (work and mac) instead of three (work and mac and second windows machine). Besides, you can't buy much of a windows laptop for just $200 (or $400 for that matter).

Given the pricing structure, upgrading every other release makes sense...

Given the pricing structure?! Ahem. I'd take some issue with that.

The initial pricing is fine, but I gave up on this scamware after Parallels 6, when I realised they were going to basically keep charging me $30 or more every other release.

Secondly, I've been getting along fine running Windows and Linux distros off of the free VirtualBox vm software ever since. It might not be as polished, but it does the job, and frankly, I've better things to do with my money than throw it down a bottomless hole every 24 months for the rest of my computing life.

I dropped Parallels in favour of VMWare Fusion when after about 7months of using it, a new OS X version broke compatibility and Parallels only "solution" was to spend money on an upgrade.

I haven't looked back since.

Also, do people really need VM presets (gaming, productivity,...) for CPU, RAM etc? I'd love to think that people toying with VMs have a good understanding of their requirements without some template "helpfully" provided.

Parallels used to have noticeably better performance than Fusion, so I went that route for a while. But the annoying "integration" features and spammy ads -- in software I paid for, no less! -- made me take another look at Fusion.

At this point, I don't know which is faster, but it's not important to me anymore. Fusion is fast enough to run Visual Studio and it's so much more pleasant to use. Plus the Fusion Pro edition can create private virtual networks, which is great when you need to set up a test environment. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Parallels does that.

Wow. I have previously used both VMWare Fusion and Parallels. I had always read reviews essentially pointing at Parallels being faster and earlier with new features and support for the latest OS X features. But when I had used both products, I vastly preferred Fusion and it did the job for me.

I read the feature set of the new version and thought that would really work for me, particularly the iCloud / Dropbox integration in Windows & Office and the Continuity features that I'm really looking forward to in Yosemite and iOS 8.

Then I read all the comments on Macrumors and here on Ars - think I'll be sticking with Fusion....

Surprised at all the negative comments on Parallels, I've been running it on my desktop and laptops since version 4 with few issues. Yes the remote app for the phone that they automatically enrolled people in was a major screw up, but I never used it and ignored the emails about paying for it.

The ad popups I got only a handful of times, and not at all anymore, not sure when the stopped, but neither of theses things stopped me using the product.

VirtualBox isn't worth mentioning, it's shit even under Linux, which is where it is supposed to be best.

Nonsense. VirtualBox is perfectly fine for anything that isn't too demanding (like clustering). I happily used it to replace a sluggish company laptop and was quite content running that configuration for YEARS in a 40+ hour per week production capacity.

They advertise a price of $80, but when one actually tries to buy it for that price, they silently change the price to 109 swiss francs (which is about $109). And if the currency selector is used to switch back to US $, the price rises again to $130 US!

I discovered a way around that. I used a proxy until the point where it gave me a PayPal link, then copied that into the browser. Voilà - fair pricing.

But you don't understand. When non-Americans pay more for consumer products than Americans, that IS fair. After all, we have to pay for all sorts of things you don't have to pay for: deductibles, copays, mcmansions, ammo, etc.

This might be the dumbest thing I've read all week, sarcasm or not.

It's a common perception. People think they are going to get something for free if healthcare is socialized through the state or through their employer. Even smart numerate people don't realize that there's no free lunch. Plus there's always an added transactional cost.